


Fall into the Quiet of Her

by rhombus



Category: Still Star-Crossed (TV)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Finale, Romance, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 13:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11692629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhombus/pseuds/rhombus
Summary: When the noise and the chaos and the danger died down, so too did Benvolio's strength.Rosaline was there to catch him.





	Fall into the Quiet of Her

When the noise and the chaos and the danger died down, so too did Benvolio's strength. The two of them deposited the injured prince into more capable hands, and Benvolio sagged against the wall. Grief, and relief, desperate bone-shaking _relief_ , were heavy weights, and his whole body trembled. He couldn't remember ever being so tired. Whatever grass grew in the field of his soul had browned and shriveled in the loneliness of his cell, bleached now further under the bright sun of his reprieve.

He closed his eyes and an arm, slim but strong, curled round his back and lifted him. Ah, sweet Capulet, the balm to his wounds. He had spent so long convincing himself he was ready to die his own body didn't seem to know how to live anymore. He could die in her arms and smile.

"Up," she said, quiet and sure. His body, yearning for direction, followed.

Rosaline took his hand and pulled him, wordless, down the hall. When she looked at him her eyes shimmered, onyx jewels, polished and round. How they could bear to look upon a husk with such tenderness he wasn't sure, but it felt good. Her hand in his felt good. He didn't yet remember how to live so perhaps he could just _experience_ for a little while longer.

There were the perfect rounds of her fingernails. The ringlet of hair over her left ear that refused to be tamed. The way she breathed. The curve of her neck. The delicate joint of her wrist. He took it all in.

She turned them round a corner. Two guards stood tall before them, spears at attention. Rosaline walked past them, head high and jaw strong, refusing to drop Benvolio's hand, decorum be damned.

Benvolio found it in him to grin at them, more from muscle memory than intention. He thought he may have recognized one from the dungeons and there sprung a ghost of triumph to see the guard without the stripe of bars halving him.

"Halt!" said the familiar guard. Perhaps the grin was a mistake. "This man is still a prisoner. We must take him back to his cell." The other guard took a step forward but was stopped in his tracks before he could take a second.

"No." Rosaline turned and stood herself in front of him, arms wide, her body a shield.

Benvolio could only imagine the look on her face. Both guards, men trained in combat and war, cowed before her.

"You will _not_ touch him."

Oh the beautiful fierceness of her.

The guards backed up, remounted their spears to attention, and nodded at her as if she were already their queen. She deserved to be a queen. Perhaps she already was, a faerie queene sent from the realm of fey to watch over the lost and abandoned. She had the power to sway princes and soldiers with but a look, the power to save the damned and bring back the dead.

No. That was the exhaustion. She was woman, not spirit. Flesh and blood and tangible hurts, even if the strength of her heart was unearthly.

Another corner, and then a door, and then stairs. Down she took him, hand firm in his, and he followed, because that was what he did now.

Everything around him was hushed—muted and muffled as though he walked through a dream. Maybe he did. Her hips swayed to silent music. Her aura glowed blue and soft and serene. He breathed, and let himself drift along behind her, ferried by the placid river-tide of her touch.

She sat him at a wooden bench. At some point they must've entered what looked to be the servants' breakfast room. She gripped his hand once and then released. She didn't have to say anything aloud. He knew she meant him to stay while she disappeared into an adjoining room.

He closed his eyes, and breathed, and felt some of the weight of living after certain death slough off his shoulders.

She returned with a basin, a cloth, and small grooming shears. The water steamed. Wordlessly she dipped the cloth in and wrung it out. Every movement was measured, precise, self-assured.

She stood before him with the cloth, then knelt closer, one knee on the bench next to him.

"You don't have to—" he said.

With her free hand she palmed his face, skimmed her thumb along his cheekbone. " _Shh_."

He wasn't certain how he was going to end his thought anyway, so he simply sat there and let her touch him. Her fingers were so soft. They left a trail of warmth along his skin like she was painting him into something like a man again.

His eyelids fluttered shut. And then she was washing him. Washing the stale blood from his nose and mouth. Washing the dust from his forehead and temples. Washing the dried tears from his eyes and cheeks. She dipped the cloth, and wrung it, and dabbed at him again, every caress methodical and tender.

She brought the cloth down the side of his neck and he stretched for her. She let out a small huff of irritation when his collar impeded her path, but she would not be denied today and he would not deny her. He opened his eyes slowly and reached for the hem of his shirt, and it was all the permission she needed to pull it over his head while he lifted his arms for her.

She breathed in and so did he, their chests synchronous. She brought the cloth down one shoulder, then the other, and any tenseness in them melted out of him under her touch. Turning his wrists in her hands, she took her time removing the grime left by the shackles, careful around the dark blush of bruises left there as well. She cleaned his hands, his fingers, the clefts of his nails. There was a moment of hesitation; she bit her bottom lip, and then she brushed her hands, cloth and bare both, down his chest, and back up again under his arms. Her touch was both intimate and chaste, tactile and innocent. He brought his own hands up and curled his fingers over her forearms, not to stop her, but to reassure her, to touch her and comfort her in return.

Her eyes were such dark pools, endless and tempting in their depths. They lowered to his mouth and he remembered the breathless moment before she kissed him in his prison.

This time, though, she merely reached behind him for the shears.

She pulled a thumb along his upper lip, raising the hair there. Her careful snips whispered in the quiet room and it was like being baptized again, steeped in her care and protection.

Her concentration was unyielding. He was bared before her, at her mercy, and what merciful ministrations she bestowed upon him.

He closed his eyes again. A peace settled in his soul. Life bloomed again in his chest. She restored him, touch by gentle touch, to being.

A shudder moved through him, the way a tree shudders the earth with the stretch of its roots.

Rosaline felt it, and frowned. "You're shivering," she said. "Are you cold?"

"No."

"I can start a fire—"

"No." He brought her hand back to his chest, placed it over his beating heart. " _You_ are my fire."

Rosaline's breath caught. He could feel every push and pull of it in the stillness of the room. Her sudden intake was a tether; it pulled him helplessly closer to her.

"I could subsist on the glow of you," he said.

She exhaled, and they were so close that movement alone was enough to press her lips to his in the softest of kisses.

His heart opened up like a rose. She kissed his lips again, and then his cheeks, his temples, tracing every part of him she had washed clean. Her touch was so soft, the sweet kiss of butterfly wings. He felt dizzy with love for her.

If this was a dream, he didn't care if he ever woke.

"Tis not a dream," she whispered, and kissed his eyelashes, and warmed his soul back to life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive me this self-indulgence.


End file.
